One girl’s hope, a nation’s dilemma A Cambridge firm’s drug worked wonders, but was hugely costly – more than Costa Rica thought it could spend on one child among so many Every two weeks, Tania Gonzalez receives a two-hour treatment with a drug called Cerezyme in a San Jose hospital. (Tito Herrera for The Boston Globe) By Stephen Heuser Globe Staff / June 14, 2009 Costa Rica – At the time, he had no way to know it would trigger a high-stakes controversy that reached all the way to Boston, but Jose Antonio Gonzalez remembers clearly the day he first heard that there might be a drug to help his little daughter. Discuss COMMENTS (52) To Jose, it sounded like a miracle. As a toddler, Tania had been a bright girl with a vivid smile and a penchant for dancing. But by age 8 she was in a strange and frightening decline. She struggled on frail limbs to carry her swollen abdomen. As other children rode their bikes on the tiny fishing village’s dirt roads, Tania lay on the sofa in her orange cinderblock house, inert. No one understood what was wrong. Specialists had run tests on Tania to rule [...]
Mayor’s Race Issue Review: Education
Cross-posted from Blue News Tribune.
This was intended to be a straight accounting of the education proposals, but it’s pretty clear that Michael Flaherty (or his education advisor) did much more work on this. His plan is far more detailed. I’m skeptical of some of his ideas about monitoring, but at least he’s being candid about it. “Expanding School Choice” might raise some hackles too.
His plan is below the fold because, even excerpted, it’s much longer than the others, which are listed in alphabetical order.
Contract With Boston:
Changes to be introduced in my first 100 days as Mayor1) Establish a commission to return to neighborhood schools and end busing, saving millions of dollars.
2) Introduce legislation to mandate longer school days and smaller classes, and to make schools community and family enrichment centers.
3) Establish an initiative to create the best Math, Science and Green Technology exam high school in the country.
Educating BostonUnder Tom Menino’s leadership Boston Public Schools have gone from a failing school district to one of the most notable urban pubic school systems in the country, winner of the prestigious Broad Award for urban school improvement.
Not resting with this success, Mayor Menino is mobilizing the City’s libraries and community centers, its universities and its businesses, to ensure that every Boston child can reach her or his fullest potential.
As a proud parent of two children in the Boston Public Schools and as a former city school teacher himself, Sam knows the challenges facing teachers and children in Boston’s schools.(snip)
Sam led the fight that restored funding to TAG (Talented and Gifted Latinos) – a program that not only works by reducing drop-out rates at Boston Public Schools among our most vulnerable students, but a program that makes our entire school system better.
Sam believes that all children deserve high-quality schools in their own neighborhood. He believes that this should be our goal and that we cannot back down from it. Sam knows that education is too important to leave to the bureaucrats. Great ideas come from parents, teachers, kids themselves and the community at large. That is why he wants to know what you think we should do to make Boston Public Schools the envy of our neighbors and of other cities.
Weekly Joke Revue Addendum
Sorry I missed this one, folks. The regressives at the National Review get out into the world so rarely they appear not to understand that Asians and Latinos are widely considered different ethnicities. Pitiful, if amusing.
